If you own a launch monitor, there’s a good chance you’ve used it to answer one question more than any other: How far do I hit my driver?
Shot Scope shared some data from golfers who use theirs LM1 and the driver accounts for 19 percent of all shots hit during a session, more than any other club. The 7-iron is after 14 percent.
I understand. The speed of the dance is fun. So it is to see until you hit a really good drive. But when I look at how to use my own LM1they are almost doing the opposite.
Instead of using it mainly to find out how far I can hit the ball, I find it mostly useful for learning how well I hit it when I am. try to take the distance.
U LM1 it’s the only launch monitor I have right now. At $199.99, it is a relatively simple unit that gives you five basic metrics: club head speed, ball speed, smash factor, carry distance and total distance. For the kind of practice I’m talking about here, that’s enough.
When I practice, I want to know what happens when I swing a three-quarter 9 iron instead of a full one. Or a half 7-iron. Here’s how I took a basic launch monitor and used it to dial in my game well beyond knowing how far the driver is going.
A 3/4 swing does not go 3/4 of the distance
If your full 9 iron carries 140 yards, your three quarter 9 iron does not automatically carry 105. Golf math is not that simple and this is the area that has been most helpful to me when incorporating the LM1 in my practice.
When you shorten your swing, you change more of the backswing length. The speed of the clubhead changes. Your strike may change. The launch may change. Even the way to deliver the club into the ball can be a little different.
The same thing applies to a half swing. Half the swing does not mean half the distance.
I’m not too caught up in making a swing that’s exactly 50 or 75 percent of your full range of motion. These are useful labels, but you have to find something that you can repeat and is recognizable to you.
Maybe your three-quarter swing feels like your hands stop around shoulder height and your half swing feels like waist-high to waist-high. Regardless of how you feel, if you are consistent, you should fly around the same distance every time.
Because guessing these shots becomes a problem
The data on the Shot Scope course helps demonstrate why this matters.
From 75 to 100 yards, 24 percent of 10 handicaps miss the short green. That rises to 37 percent for 20 handicaps and 46 percent for 25 handicaps.
The proximity even worse. A 10 handicap averages 44 feet from 75 to 100 yards. A 20 handicap averages 56 feet from 75 to 100 yards.
Distance control isn’t the only reason for those numbers, but it’s hard to control distance when you don’t know what your swing is going to produce.
Think of an 83-yard approach where you decide to hit “a little 3/4” cone. If you’ve never measured that swing, what does 3/4 mean? Does it carry 76 yards? Eighty three? Ninety? Now you missed a 50-foot putt when you were only 80 yards from the hole to begin with.
This is not just a wedge issue. You can also see it in all the scoring irons.
How to use the LM1 to learn a partial swing
You don’t need to turn your entire range session into a distance test. In fact, I think this works best if you focus on one or two shots you want to add and work with a simple process.
Start with the full swing
Hit a few normal shots with the club first. Don’t worry about maxing out your distance; get a realistic idea of what a solid stock swing looks like and how much it wears.
Create a repeatable shorter swing
Next, decide whether to work on a movement of half or three quarters and give a physical control point.
I prefer this to thinking about swinging at 50 or 75 percent effort. Trying to “swing easier” can mean something different from one swing to the next. A shorter backswing with a clear control point gives you something much more tangible to repeat. Depending on the club I have in hand, I might even take a tight stance and stroke a little. Make the adjustments you need to make.
Make enough shots to see a pattern
Now hit multiple balls while watching the distance of the carry.
If my three-quarter 9 iron carries 119, 121, 118, 120 and 121 yards, I’ve learned something useful. That swing is starting to look like a 120 yard shot.
If the transports are 106, 124, 115, 127 and 111, knowing that the average does not help nearly as much. I don’t have that shot yet. To make this work, you want to look at consistency and whatever size swing or movement it takes to develop that consistency.
Don’t force the result you expect
One of the things I had to train myself to do was stop forcing numbers into a neat box. At first he was looking for a 100-yard shot or a 115-yard shot. Then I realized that wasn’t the most helpful way to approach it.
The key was to find a repeatable movement first and then work with whatever number the swing produced. If it carries 92 yards or 103 yards, that’s fine. What matters is knowing the number and being able to reproduce it.
Leave the blow and return to it
Once I feel like I’ve found the swing and the number, I don’t want to sit there and hit 20 more identical shots.
I’ll change clubs, hit some full swings and change the target. Later in the session, I’ll go back and try the partial shot again. When I feel that I have something to trust, I will take it to the course. It’s a very different feeling on the course knowing that I have this shot instead of trying to “take some”.
Don’t limit this to your wedges
I have already written about it construct a wedge distance matrix and I still think it’s valuable. This one is a little different.
I’m talking about developing partial strokes throughout the bag. I went through this process for my 6-iron and it helped me a lot, especially if I needed to keep a lower shot and punch out. I still want an idea of how long it will take. Once you’ve covered the distance, also pay attention to the trajectory, and give options for different trajectories.
Make this part of your normal practice
Shot Scope says LM1 users average 60 shots and 5.8 different clubs per range session. You don’t need to dedicate an entire bucket to learning partial swings. Work on the clubs you normally practice, mix in a few half and three-quarter swings and then come back to those shots later in the session to see if you can reproduce the numbers.
Seeing how far you hit your best drive is fun. Knowing how far the shots you guessed to carry can be much more useful.
The place LM1 user data shows that the driver gets the most use. I think golfers are missing the biggest opportunity appeared first MyGolfSpy.
